Tyler Cowen

In my Wednesday column , I described a vision of our future as imagined by economist Tyler Cowen : More rich people, more poor people and a smaller middle class; constant measurement of workers to help employers eliminate slackers; and “the creation of a new underclass,” including retirees clustered in shantytowns that resemble “the better dwellings you might find in a Rio de Janeiro favela .” Is there any way to...

Re "Poof goes the middle class," Opinion, Oct. 23 Thanks to Doyle McManus for his timely review of Tyler Cowen's book, "Average Is Over. " The trends crippling the middle class that Cowen writes about have been in the making since the 1970s. It took the Great Recession to finally bring this research the recognition it deserves. Americans today instinctively know that something is wrong, thus the high percentage who tell pollsters the country is going in the wrong direction. But I think few understand that their economic world has changed forever.

Re "Poof goes the middle class," Opinion, Oct. 23 Thanks to Doyle McManus for his timely review of Tyler Cowen's book, "Average Is Over. " The trends crippling the middle class that Cowen writes about have been in the making since the 1970s. It took the Great Recession to finally bring this research the recognition it deserves. Americans today instinctively know that something is wrong, thus the high percentage who tell pollsters the country is going in the wrong direction. But I think few understand that their economic world has changed forever.

In my Wednesday column , I described a vision of our future as imagined by economist Tyler Cowen : More rich people, more poor people and a smaller middle class; constant measurement of workers to help employers eliminate slackers; and “the creation of a new underclass,” including retirees clustered in shantytowns that resemble “the better dwellings you might find in a Rio de Janeiro favela .” Is there any way to...

February 2, 2003 | Benjamin R. Barber, Benjamin R. Barber, a distinguished professor at the University of Maryland, is the author of numerous books, including "Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" and "The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House."

Critics of imperialism have long insisted that international exchange and free trade are screens for the colonization of one culture by another. In my "Jihad vs. McWorld," for example, I argued that the dominant pop culture of the United States, embedded in fast food, fast music and fast computers, not only erodes the particularity of foreign cultures but also promotes a radical homogenization of taste and mores within American society as well as around the world.

Re "Foes of Illegal Immigration See Support Growing," May 16 Thank you for this article. I've been waiting for someone to articulate the obvious: We just don't have the resources to pay for services for citizens and a seemingly endless wave of illegal immigrants. To me, the recent demonstrations proved nothing other than that the normally gridlocked traffic situation was noticeably better. It made me wonder if we all would be better off with a zero-tolerance policy of illegal immigration.

To those obsessed with the authenticity of native cultures, it will come as dispiriting news that Canada's Inuit did not begin carving soapstone until 1948. Or that Tuvan throat-singing was stagnant until Western record sales helped revive it. Or that the theme song chosen by Saddam Hussein, on the occasion of his 54th birthday, was Frank Sinatra's "My Way." Tyler Cowen is not discouraged by these facts. On the contrary, the slightly impish academic revels in them.

Performances, exhibitions and educational programs of California's nonprofit arts organizations pump $5.4 billion annually into the state's economy, making the arts more than twice as powerful an economic engine as they were a decade ago, according to a study unveiled Thursday by the California Arts Council, the state's beleaguered arts-funding agency.

Paul Krugman occupies two spheres in the American intelligentsia. In one, he is a New York Times op-ed columnist known for his barbed opinions about President Bush's policies. In the other, he is a Princeton University economist famous for his research on international trade and finance. On Monday, it was Krugman the academic who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his study of international trade and the effects of globalization.

A fascinating debate has broken out among economists and economic pundits concerning the Congressional Budget Office's projections that the Affordable Care Act will allow -- or induce -- some workers to leave the job market. The debate is over whether, or how much, this is a "distortion" of the labor market caused by the healthcare law. Tyler Cowen of the free-market Mercatus Center takes a shorthand look at the issue here . But the real question should be whether Obamacare is distorting the labor market or removing a distortion that previously existed.

February 2, 2003 | Benjamin R. Barber, Benjamin R. Barber, a distinguished professor at the University of Maryland, is the author of numerous books, including "Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" and "The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House."

Critics of imperialism have long insisted that international exchange and free trade are screens for the colonization of one culture by another. In my "Jihad vs. McWorld," for example, I argued that the dominant pop culture of the United States, embedded in fast food, fast music and fast computers, not only erodes the particularity of foreign cultures but also promotes a radical homogenization of taste and mores within American society as well as around the world.

Amid the stock market's continuing slide, many Wall Streeters are expressing satisfaction with the "circuit breakers" that seem to be slowing the decline. But that's raising a difficult question: Would it be better just to let the market find its own level--as quickly as possible--rather than artificially stretch out the plunge?

The question seems simple, but shedding light on the answer was worth a Nobel Prize for three American economists: How do we know how much an item is worth? Eugene F. Fama and Lars Peter Hansen of the University of Chicago and Robert J. Shiller of Yale University spent decades working on that problem, separately pioneering two competing views on finance that have strongly influenced the way people save and invest as well as major issues in public policy. Fama, 74, spent a five-decade career in Chicago demonstrating how well free markets can determine the value of stocks, bonds and other assets.